In those years of constant change in the mid-nineties, continuity in terms of family life was provided most solidly by my aunt Ena. We had become great friends way back in 1983, when my adventures at S. Thomas’ had prompted her to seek to get to know me better. We got on superbly from the start, and as she said on her 90th birthday, when it was clear that she was dying, there was no reason to be sad for we had had such good times together.

These were first and foremost at Aluwihare, her wonderful home in the hills, which she had transformed into a magic retreat, full of colour and exotic artefacts. In addition to the batik and the embroidery done by her girls, as she still called them a quarter of a century after they had begun working with her, she had created employment for the boys of the village too, a carpentry shed and then a brass foundry. And then she had also started a restaurant, not one but two for she had no sense of restraint, K1 as she called it down the hill from her home where meals could be booked by tour groups, K2 on the roadside, which was not only a Kitchen but also provided rooms to stay.

The first was catered to by her own cook, Suja who she claimed could not boil water when she had first come to work, but who now produced the most marvelous concoctions. The other provided work for the middle aged ladies of the village, some of them relations. Though they exuded confusion as they bustled about, they were quite charming, and those who stayed and those who ate were entranced. The American ambassador, Peter Burleigh, used it seems to stay there often, which may well have been for nefarious purposes, but he was dearly loved by the ladies.

We had gone down often to Yala in the eighties, with memorable holidays during the times of turmoil, when we had the Park practically to ourselves. But when the JVP insurrection was over, more and more people began to visit, so we found other places too, Uda Walawe and Horton Plains and more frequently Wasgomuwa, which was a relatively short journey from Alu, over the Knuckles range to the Eastern plain. Continue reading →

I was rarely at home during the two years after I left USJP, not only because of work requirements and my travels, but also because I was finding the situation unbearable. My niece and nephew seemed a nuisance, not least because they were clearly a strain on my parents. My mother shouted much more than was good for her, so much so that I even once remonstrated with her on my niece’s behalf, only to be told sadly that she was doing her best to get her straight, but did not think she would succeed.

Upset though I was by the children’s presence, I realized too that I could hardly blame them, certainly not the little girl, who was too young to understand why she had been sent away from her parents, and naturally reacted badly. When finally the whole family was together again in Australia, she seemed to settle down, which suggests that the trauma of separation is something that should be avoided. But by then it was too late to tell my mother that a refusal in 1994 to take on the responsibility might have served everyone better.

When in Colombo I found refuge at Nirmali’s, in the office that had been used for the various book production programmes the English Association had taken on when the British Council decided it should not take bread from the mouth of British publishers, as one memorable directive went. Initially we had had an office in Bagatelle Road, when the Association worked for the Council on the first CIDA book project, and we had used the place also to house Scott Richards when he came out for various workshops. This led to entertaining stories about what he claimed was attempted seduction by the caretaker the Council had put in place, but all this had to stop when the Council withdrew.

The Association was then kindly given space in Nirmali’s annexe, where she also conducted classes, and I produced several books there, helped by my old Secretary at the Council who worked for us for very little pay at weekends. We also had the Thalgodapitiya girls, whose mother ran the Lionel Wendt, two noisy but extraordinarily efficient characters. Between them all they taught me to use a computer, which I had long resisted on the grounds that I was too old. The result was a stream of prose, including the novels ‘Servants’ in 1995 and ‘An English Education’ in 1996. Since then, I fear, I have never really been sociable.

Though work and travel were fulfilling, and it was salutary to discover the joys of solitude, 1995 was a bleak year in Colombo. In May my aunt Lakshmi was murdered, at the house she had built for herself in Bagatelle Road. She had moved there to be reasonably near us while also guarding her independence, which she had cherished for well over a decade and a half at the Old Place, my grandmother’s childhood home in Kurunagala. Continue reading →

Marie was given the news in a long letter from my mother who advised her not to rush back, and indeed to stay away longer than planned. For once she listened to advice and even, uncharacteristically, expressed herself shocked. Ordinarily one would have expected her to have declared that she had suspected something, but on this occasion she made no such claims. All she said was that Palitha had been amongst those who had urged her to go abroad when she did, and that this should have made her suspect something. At the time however, she had to admit, she had thought he was only concerned for her welfare.

It was my father surprisingly who claimed some sort of foreknowledge. ‘I never liked that fellow,’ he insisted. ‘You could tell he thought himself a cut above his station in life. I could never understand why Marie tolerated him. Normally she’s so particular. But this chap got away with murder. Why, one day I saw him on that bench in her cage, sitting down and talking to her while she was standing up. I had half a mind to stop the car and lace the beggar two slaps. But then I thought that she couldn’t afford to lose him so it was better not to interfere. I wish now that I had.’

That occasion however was the last. Already there had begun the unrest that indicated the JVP was once more a force to reckon with. This was quite understandable and some of us even sympathized, for the government, in not holding elections for eleven years and showing itself inclined to cling to power for even longer if possible, had driven opposition underground. This was a situation on which the JVP thrived. The party had been proscribed, along with two more orthodox Communist parties, on wholly trumped up charges of spearheading communal riots in 1983. Everyone however knew that it was in fact forces in the government who were responsible. The other parties had accordingly protested their innocence. The JVP Politbureau however had not argued at all. Rather they accepted the challenge and began to reorganize in the form that suited them best. Even those of us who found their tactics questionable had to grant that, had it not been for the agitation they spearheaded, which other opposition forces in turn then found courage to support, the government might never have held elections.

Unfortunately even after elections were at last announced the JVP, perhaps carried away by its success, demanded that the elections be boycotted. The other opposition parties refused to go along with them and the boycott failed. However the impact of the JVP boycott, violently enforced in areas where the government was weak, ensured a government victory, albeit for a different Presidential candidate and what proved a new dispensation.

In retrospect the 1971 insurrection seems a relatively tame affair, though it was traumatic enough while it lasted. I was in fact in Kurunegala at the time, having gone there for my usual April break, more sentimental than usual because I knew that it would be the last holiday of that sort. I had, to my surprise, for I had only done the entrance exam as a sort of trial run, won an award to Oxford for the coming academic year. I could not see Palm Court surviving till I got back; though in fact it did, albeit in greatly truncated form. Only Marie was there when I got back. Her father had died while I was still en route to England in August that year, and his sister Lilian followed him six months later.

My stay that April had been longer than originally intended. The police station in Kurunegala was attacked on the first night, along with police stations all over the country. The struggle had been violent, I gathered later, having managed to sleep through it all though it had kept Marie and her father quaking all night. But the attack was finally repulsed and after that the town itself remained secure. However, there were enough pockets of JVP domination on the road to Colombo to keep it closed for over a week. An almost continuous curfew was imposed, and we only survived in fact on the food that Fr. Jude and my uncle and anyone else who had curfew passes was able to bring.

The campus at Sabaragamuwa was beautifully situated, on a plateau below Horton Plains. Sadly none of the houses the Japanese had built commanded any sort of a view, but the moment you stepped outside you had a glorious vista of hills to the north. The place was also ideally situated for drives, most memorably eastward towards Beragala, from where you could either go straight on past Diyaluma to Wellawaya and the East, or else turn upward to Haputale. I had much relished the latter drive when I coordinated the AUC English programmes at Belihuloya and Rahangala, just before Diyatalawa, and this was a pleasure I experienced again, once a week for seven years, after I took over coordination of the degree programme at the Military Academy at Diyatalawa.

Ena and some of the hard core spent one delightful New Year with me at Belihuloya, way back in 1994 when it was still an Affiliated University College. Shanthi had managed to convince her office that she had work to do in the area, and in fact she made Harin Abeysekera drive her up one day to Diyatalawa to some agricultural station. Priyani sensibly stayed behind, with their son, which meant they could come with Ena and me on a leisurely drive to Diyaluma and back. For the rest, we had a tranquil time, Priyani very tactfully taking her son away to play on the swings when he became restless.

Where Piyadasa and Suja stayed on for decades, Ena’ drivers changed over the years, as did her mode of transport. When I first went up to Alu, she had a Toyota double cab, driven by Sena, a portly old man with a shock of white hair that made him look immensely distinguished. In those days Ena drove around often, going into town to buy her groceries and whatever else took her fancy, and setting off every afternoon on an excursion into the hills and valleys surrounding Matale.

It was nothing in those days for us to set off after lunch to Wireless Kanda, as we called the highest point in the hills to the East, before the road dropped down to Pallebadda and then to the area around Girandurukotte where lands had been opened up for settlers under the Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme. That was the area too in which later the Wasgamuwa Park was set up, so the drive became familiar for quite another reason in the nineties. In the eighties however it was purely to loaf, getting up to the highest point before the mists rose, and then driving back as the sun set.

The most unusual wild life trips were those to Horton Plains, where Anderson Lodge still provided log fires and a certain amount of hot water. I have strong recollections of a couple of trips, though there may have been more. One was with Nihal Fernando, and we actually saw a leopard darting across the Plains early one morning.

The other I remember for a radiant full moon, which kept bobbing up over the clouds when we had stayed out late one evening, and we saw sambhur silhouetted in the distance in its light. That I think was when we entertained Ambepitiya, who must have been quite bemused at the conversation, Shanthi being at her sophisticated best. I was reminded then of a glorious holiday we had had in Cornwall when I was at University, when we had decided to thank the lady in the cottage next door who had helped us find our feet.

I spent several Christmases with Ena at Yala and later at Wasgamuwa. The first of these was in 1987, when her daughter Kusum too joined us, and Ena decorated the Bungalow and its surroundings magically, Japanese lanterns winking at us through the trees as dusk fell. We were in Talgasmankada, the most distant bungalow, on the banks of the Manik Ganga. In those early days we would regularly venture also into Block Two, which required a permit and very steady driving in a good vehicle. Raji furnished both, and we would have long days out in that arid plain, a marked contrast to the lush jungle of Block One. We rarely saw anything, but the landscape was enchanting, and the picnics in isolated spots of green that had sprung up around scarce sources of water.

A friend from England joined us for two more Christmases, in 1990 and 1991, when Kusum came out again with the husband she had married in 1989, at a series of weddings including a spectacular ceremony at Alu at the height of the JVP problems. In 1990 there were just a few of us, which was bliss, though Kusum terrified poor John, having decided that someone who had been to Oxford and taught at Eton needed to be taken down a peg. This was grossly unfair, for John was never obtrusive about his position, but as Ena said, Kusum was just being Kusum. To me she was absolutely charming, and it was a pleasure to talk to someone so obviously bright who was keenly interested in the social and political upheavals going on in Sri Lanka at the time, without the partisan commitments evinced by so many in what might be termed the Colombo establishment.

There were several more trips to Yala that year, and one to Wilpattu for the April New Year holidays. Richard was meant to come with us, but we also asked his mother Manorani, at which point he declared that he had too much work and could not get away. Like many markedly self aware people, he was determined to keep the various aspects of his life apart. I had realized this the previous year, when he had asked me to spend some time with him and Manorani at Kadirana, at a small estate bungalow not too far from Colombo which was owned by a cousin of his father. The first evening was delightful, but the next day he decided that he had to get back to Colombo for work, and we did not see very much of him in the days that followed. Manorani and I had a great time together, me writing, she sleeping most of the time and reading trashy novels, but it was always fun to have Richard back, even if late at night, with time only for a hasty breakfast next morning.

While we were at Wilpattu, typically, he turned up on his motor-bike, which he had bought in the days we taught together at 8th Lane, falling off regularly and cultivating spectacular bruises, but ploughing on with his efforts to master the monster. He spent a few hours with us, claiming he was en route to some assignment. In fact this was true, for it was in those days that he had begun doing propaganda work for Lalith Athulathmudali who had recently taken up the position of Minister of National Security. Lalith had been a great friend of Manorani, and then of Richard, who saw him as a sort of mentor. He was very fond of him, and described him as Tigger incarnate, from the Winnie-the-Pooh books, full of enthusiasms that he did not think through properly. This was not quite accurate I think, for Lalith was ambitious and planned carefully, but Richard, while not entirely disagreeing, saw him as nevertheless comparatively innocent, and a tool in the hands of President Jayewardene.